The Party

That party was one of the wildest I've ever been to in my life.

I don't really know why I even went, except that the other alternative was to be the only one in my year who didn't go. It wasn't really a party, not at first. It was supposed to be the Yule Ball. It was pretty interesting, actually.

It turned out that what we'd said was a Yule Ball was a surprise birthday party for one of the students--a Hufflepuff by the name of Bertha Reed. I know Bertha--she's a good friend of mine. The Bertha is short for Roberta. She's pretty cool--that's why I went.

Once Bertha had showed up, we all just kind of hung around for awhile. We snacked on some of the refreshments sitting on the table. Some of the kids played Foosich, which is basically Table Quiddich, which means it's bloody difficult to play. Then Professor McGonagall announced that we were going to be playing some party games. Uh-oh.

The first game was pretty okay. We had to take small, fluffy, white things--cotton balls--and drop them into buckets about two yards away. Sounds easy? It wasn't. We were all blindfolded. On our team, the only one who got all the cotton balls in was Zaccius Poster. I came pretty darn close, though. We won that race.

The next game was interesting. It was a kind of relay race. We had to stand in a line and pass a balloon from one person to the next--in our knees! It definitely didn't look right. As Bertha said, ew! We lost the first race and won the second. It was harder for us to win, because Carol Rosen was on our team. She was at the end, but still, a broken leg is a broken leg, and Madame Pomfrey was on vacation.

The third game just fell apart--literally. We were each given an extra-long toothpick and told to put it in our mouths. Then they told us that we were going to use them to pass doughnuts! Well, the two girls behind me didn't want to have to do that, because they were right in front of Zaccius. I switched with them, only because he was a Gryffindor and I knew him. He was annoyed, let me tell you. He hissed at the two girls that he was never speaking to them again. See, last year we did Romeo and Juliet as a class and he had to be Romeo and I was Juliet and...But that's another story. Anyway, the doughnut got to me and my toothpick broke, so we didn't even get to Zaccius. I don't think he'd ever been more relieved.

The final game was a new form of Charades. One person acted something out while someone else tried to figure it out. Then the second person had to act it out while a third person (who hadn't seen the first) tried to guess. Whoever guessed it correctly got the points. If no one guessed it right, the first person's team got the points. It sounds confusing, but it isn't. At the end of the games, my team won, so we got to have Honeydukes chocolate bars while we watched Bertha open her presents.

Bertha got some pretty cool stuff. I'm the only one who gave her a handmade gift--I made her a bookend. She loved it, though. She also got a lot of money and a lot of bracelets and rings and stuff like that. One of her favourite things, though, was from a girl named Eileen Host. Eileen had been to Alaska, which is one of those American states, and bought Bertha a moose. But this wasn't just any moose. It was a pooping moose--you squeeze the back end and it poops, a rubber poop that doesn't actually come out. See, Bertha has this thing for poop. Don't ask me why.

Then we had dinner. It was pizza. It wasn't all that bad, either. Then Professor McGonagall brought out the cake, which was a chocolate masterpiece. There was more than enough to go around, and then some. When that was over with, music started. We had a twist contest. Unfortunately, I couldn't twist quite that low. Elisabeth Font won. That girl can go low! They did a swing dance and the limbo. I couldn't find anyone that wanted to "jitterbug" so I sat the swing one out, but I held the limbo stick for the limbo. After that I didn't dance too much, but I did a whole lot of watching.

After awhile came the slow dances. Girls danced with each other, and a couple boys were brave enough to dance with girls. The dances began getting wilder and wilder. The band played a Muggle song I knew well called "The Time Warp". It's from this ridiculous movie called "The Rocky Horror Picture Show". So I got up and did the time warp with Ron. Then I returned to sitting in an alcove doing nothing. After a while I got bored and went outside. It was a little rainy, but I didn't care. I stared out across the storm-tossed lake, just thinking in the quiet. Then I went back inside.

I was sitting in my alcove. Carol was sitting on a sofa with her leg up, and her crutches had become the hit of the party. Everyone was playing or dancing with them. Hermione was kind of hiding in a side room. She was reading. Eileen was telling Harry something, though he didn't seem to be listening.

Ron and Dean--I'd swear they were drunk--were running around hitting each other--and everyone else--on the head with little inflatable sticks. Colin was alternately throwing cotton balls at the dancers and swirling around on a little chair on wheels. He's kind of annoying at times, but I think he's kind of cute, too. The girls were pushing him around on the chair, mostly to get him out of the way.

Suddenly there was a commotion. Ron had left the room--I hadn't even noticed--and now he was returning with Hermione in his arms. She was struggling kind of feebly, but at the same time she was laughing really hard. Ron deposited her unceremoniously on the floor and moved aside. Everyone stepped to the left or right and started chanting, "Dance with Harry! Dance with Harry! Dance with Harry!" Hermione was blushing as she struggled to get off the floor, and Harry was blushing too.

The party started thinning out, and I decided to get off to bed. It had been a hectic, exciting night.

Bertha Reed

Narrator (Ginny Weasley)

Harry Potter

Hermione Granger